Little Rockford made big impact on Knaus, others

ROCKFORD, Ill. -- At some point, you look out the windshield and realize there is nothing around you but corn -- wide expanses of it, stretching to the tree line on either side of the Illinois Tollway, the stalks so bunched together and so thick with green, summertime foliage that it seems like a man could walk along the tops of them without falling through. You're a very long way from Chicago now, even though it doesn't look like it on the map. The last of the western suburbs fell away more than an hour ago, spitting you out into a part of the world that feels about as close to the big city as it does to the moon.

Matt Kenseth, before the start of an ARTGO race at Rockford.

It's almost easy to see why somebody might leave, particularly a bright kid with big ambitions, who perhaps feels a little hemmed in by geography and knows better opportunities may await somewhere else. That's what Chad Knaus did, moving away from his modest hometown two decades ago and never looking back, a necessary emigration that allowed him to become one of the most successful NASCAR crew chiefs of all time. He couldn't have stayed in Rockford, really, not someone who was turning wrenches on his father's late model at 14, and was so organized and detail-oriented that breaking into the sport's premier series felt almost like a lateral move.

And yet, he can't leave the place behind, either. He'll never be able to, not as long as he's mapping setup strategies or making pit calls for the No. 48 Chevy, not as long as he sits on top of that box on weekends with a radio strapped to his head and issues advice and instruction in the same concise manner he always has. Before he became a champion, before he became a crew chief, before he became a tire changer for Jeff Gordon's great "Rainbow Warrior" teams of the 1990s, Knaus was a racer at Rockford Speedway, a quarter-mile short track in a former cornfield where the foundation for everything to follow was laid.

"When you're trying to compete in any weekly racing series, you learn a lot about detail, maintenance, tenacity, things like that. And I think a lot of that has been transposed into our team," Knaus said last weekend at Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, more than 100 miles from his hometown. "Fortunately enough, the mentality we had back then when we were racing was very similar to the mentality that [Ray] Evernham had when he was starting at the [No.] 24 [team]. So it was a really easy fit for me to learn and develop into the style of the 24 car back then, because that's the same mentality we had when I was racing in the Midwest." (Continued)